The Book of Romans and a Packet of Chocolate

The Book of Romans and a Packet of Chocolate August 28, 2016

Good Shepherd’s Tuesday Bible Study, which is my favorite hour of the week, has been going through Romans for the last many months. I like to arrange myself in the back row with a thermos of tea and a packet of chocolate and paint my nails bright colors while Matt teases out the text. It’s one of the only moments I can sit, without some jostling interruption, and smooth over the horrible cracks and brokenness of my nails. Sitting down and not touching anything, for one whole hour, is kind of a luxury. I carefully pour tea without bashing the slowly drying polish, and extract chocolate square by square. It’s like a holiday.

But also there’s the bible. We go carefully, line by line, trying to get at the heart of whatever Paul is saying, his argument building over the many chapters. It feels surreal to sit so quiet when such earth shattering things (that’s a technical theological term) are being said. Things like ‘there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.’ Paul has just perfectly articulated all the just condemnation of all of humanity, including me. Everyone has sinned, has wrecked everything, so much so that God himself had to come in and rescue creation, and restore sanity. Surely, even if there isn’t hell, there should be some on going recrimination, some drip drip drip of why can’t you just be a better person. No condemnation? I sit there and eat another chocolate. I hear the words but I can’t possibly understand them. Got mad at Matt, but it was really Paul, or maybe God, because launching something like that out there and then going on without putting some kind of helpful cue in–like I Get It, close your mouth, dear–isn’t very nice. I’m just supposed to pack up my polish and go home? As Aloucious would say, “inconceivable.”

Later I got mad again when Paul says, ‘present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing and acceptable’ and the words keep going on, when I feel like sitting stock still for some many months. I sit there, dumbly eating chocolates, and then get up and go on with my life. How bout “sinful, and lumpy, and half baked”?

The very idea that a condemned person should be snatched away from condemnation and be able to go free is catastrophic enough. But then that the very members that brought about the original condemnation should be turned around and offered as a pure spotless sacrifice is ridiculous. Because of course, me with my chocolate in the back row, would rather have it the other way. Being condemned, I will do something to get myself together, work off the trouble myself, and then go free. The idea of sacrifice makes sense when you’ve done something wrong. Which we all have. But having the penalty taken away and then sacrificing something, yourself, is deeply contrary to our broken ways of thinking and being.

What’s the sacrifice for? Paul goes on into the minutia of people trying to get along with each other. What kind of person should you be? How should you live? I sit roiling in the back, unable to deal. Sure that there’s more somewhere, some catch. The gospel is too simple, and too earth shattering.


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